With Playground's split family support, you can divide a household into two groups to better manage billing, communication, and attendance for split families. This ensures that each guardian only has a view of their current balance and no additional information is shared between the groups.
Who Is This Guide For & When You Need It
If you have families where guardians share responsibilities (split households) or when a guardian belongs to more than one family setup (blended), this guide walks you through what to do and when.
Scenario | Use "Split Family" | Use "Blended Family" |
Guardians share a student, but live in different households, and should have separate view of billing & attendance | Split the family |
|
Single guardian with children from different relationships, different other guardians per child |
| Blend the family |
Split a Family
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From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.
Use the search bar to locate the student record you wish to split.
Click on the student's name to be navigated to their profile.
Click on the Settings tab and then scroll down the page to the Account section.
Click the red Split family button.
Name both groups on the Split family window.
We typically recommend using the guardians' names to avoid confusion.
Assign guardians to each group via the dropdown menu
This should be done based on the relationship of the guardians to each other
Click Split family to confirm the split
🚨 Guardian payment methods will display on the All section of a student's Payments tab after the family is split. You can click on the ellipsis(. . .) next to the card or account in the Payment methods section to remove the payment method, the guardians will have to add their payment method once more under their group via mobile or web. Guardians must have payment methods added under their specific groups.
Merge a Split Family
From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.
Use the search bar to locate the student record you wish to merge
Click on the student's name to be navigated to their profile
Click on the Settings tab.
Scroll down the page to the Account section.
Click on Edit Split Family in blue.
Click on Unsplit Family on the bottom-left of your view of the Update split family window.
Confirm the merger on the pop-up that appears.
Bill Split Families
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🚨 Split families lose visibility into the All tab of their student's Payments tab. You will want to recreate each upcoming charge for each guardian.
From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.
Use the search bar to locate the student you would like to bill, and then click on the student's name to navigate to their profile.
Click on the Payments tab.
Click Actions in the top-right and then click Create Debits.
Complete the Item Name and Price fields.
Proceed to Select a guardian group to assign this charge to. Pick the group you wish to bill first.
Complete the remaining fields for the bill.
Click Save item at the bottom of the page to confirm this charge.
Create a bill for the next group by clicking Add item and repeating steps 5 - 8.
Subsidy Billing for Split Families
Click on the Subsidies tab under Billing.
Click on the agency you are recording a deposit for.
Click Add Deposit in the top-right.
To edit a previous deposit, click on the ellipsis(. . .) next to the deposit, then click Edit.
Complete the information in the Details section at the top of the page.
Use the search bar in the Distribution section to locate the student(s). The group names are listed under the name of the student.
Enter the information for the split-family student(s).
Complete the rest of the deposit and click Finish on the top-right.
Blended Families
A blended family is when a guardian has children with different sets of primary guardians.
What is a Blended Family?
A blended family in Playground happens when one guardian (like a parent) has children in different family groups with different sets of guardians. For example:
Guardian A + Guardian B share Students 1 & 2.
Guardian A + Guardian C share Student 3.
Guardian A needs to appear in both family accounts so they can toggle between them.
💡 The shared guardian will need to be added to each family account separately. This guardian will create two separate accounts. The guardian can use the same email address. They will be asked to link accounts in order to use the Switch Accounts function to easily toggle between families.
Step-by-Step: How to Create a Blended Family
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Start with the original family
Go to the student’s profile (e.g., Peter, Jenny, Robert).
Decide which child needs to be moved to a new family.
Prepare the new family
From the Students tab, add a new temporary student (e.g., “Test Tester”).
Assign this student to a classroom.
Add the guardian(s) for the new family (e.g., Mom: Kavya Li).
If the guardian already has an account, enter the same email to allow them to toggle/switch between families.
If you use a different email, they’ll need to log out/in separately to access each family.
Transfer the child (Must Reach Out To Support)
Providers will NOT be able to transfer the student as that feature only exist on the support end. Be explicitly clear which students need to be transferred - which students need to be in the same family unit with the proper guardian.
Clean up the temporary student
Go into the new family’s account.
Delete the placeholder student (“Test Tester”).
Now only the transferred child (e.g., Jenny) remains.
Confirm guardian access
Check the guardian’s profile (e.g., Min Li).
You should see them attached to both family accounts.
If the same email was used, the guardian can use the Switch Accounts option to toggle between families.
If different emails were used, they’ll need to sign out and sign back in.
